A gift of a streaming service or a digital media player could make a techie friend merry and bright this holiday season.

For the techie friends on your holiday shopping list, you can drive to the grocery store and grab gift cards. But without much more effort, you can find a present they'll really use -- and something that says you put more than 60 panicked seconds into the selection.

Music and video

A subscription to a music or video service is the gift that keeps giving. And you can send one without leaving your house.

Netflix lets you a gift a dollar amount starting at $25 for its subscription service. Your favorite binge-watcher can indulge in all of Netflix's TV shows and movies, including the upcoming second season of "Jessica Jones."

An HBO Now subscription is a thoughtful gift but requires you to buy a physical HBO Now gift card. Gift cards from the online HBO Shop are not redeemable for the HBO Now on-demand service. HBO Now lets you stream movies and HBO shows to any device, without a cable subscription.

For music, you can buy gift certificates for Apple Music (three months of the service for $29.97, or a year for $99) or Google's Play Music (one month for $9.99, three months for $29.97, or six months for $59.94). (If you're looking for other Apple gifts on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, don't expect much: The company skipped making deals last year. )

Spotify has a one-month gift subscription for $9.99, three months for $29.97, six for $59.94, and 12 months' worth of its Premium service for $119.88.

Stocking stuffers

If your giftee has been extra good this year, you might buy a digital media player to go with that music or video subscription, to stream media from the Internet to a TV or home audio system. All the devices are small enough to slip easily into a stocking.

Google's Chromecast starts at $35, is not much bigger than a large pack of gum, and can stream content -- including from Netflix, YouTube, and Spotify -- from a phone to a TV.

Amazon's Fire TV Stick is another good choice. At $39.99, it can stream Hulu, HBO Now, and of course Amazon Prime Video.

It's not quite Jeeves, but for $49.99, you can also give the gift of a digital assistant. The voice-controlled Amazon Echo Dot can play music, order a pizza, set a timer, and more, and it's just 1.3 by 3.3 inches.

Clifford Colby follows the Mac and Android markets for Download.com. He's been an editor at Peachpit Press and a handful of now-dead computer magazines, including MacWeek, MacUser, and Corporate Computing.